Returning from the American Library Association meeting in Chicago this past June, I sat in my aisle seat reading an advance review copy of Ann...
Book Club
Spooky Shenanigans with “Pizza and Taco”
Do you have a new reader in your life who loves funny stories? If so, they may be ready to dig into the Pizza and Taco series from Minneapolis...
Mystery Novelist Finds Inspiration in Edina
Writer Matt Goldman uses Edina as a backdrop for his mystery novels. Local author Matt Goldman has published six books over the past seven years....
A Good Family
A Good Family, written by local author Matt Goldman, is paced so perfectly that it is very hard to put down. Set in the Country Club neighborhood of...
A Blue-Ribbon Read
Snow cones! Corn on the cob! Baby animals! Midway games! Get your young readers ready for the Great Minnesota Get Together with Astrid and Apollo....
And This Is About Love
Sam Masur and Sadie Green meet in the game room of a Los Angeles hospital, where Sam is recovering from a bad car crash and Sadie’s sister is...
A Multigenerational Adventure
In this middle grade novel, Maizy Chen’s mother brings her from Los Angeles to Last Chance, Minnesota, to help her grandparents and their Chinese...
Now Is Not the Time to Panic
Four years ago, I attended Library Journal’s Day of Dialog and Book Expo in New York. For me, it was like attending the Academy Awards. I heard a...
Finding Beauty in a Midwest Spring
Is there anything beautiful in this early part of spring, when everything is gray and pale and mucky and melty? In Molly Beth Griffin’s 2021 picture...
Love Marriage Book Review
The novel Love Marriage by Booker Award–finalist Monica Ali opens in the London bedroom of 26-year-old Dr. Yasmin Ghorami. The delicious scents of...
A Buzz-Worthy Picture Book
We are out for honey with a hungry bear! Warm, woodsy illustrations of a sneaky bear and an industrious bee fill the pages of A Bear, a Bee, and a...
Author and Illustrator Creates Worlds of Imagination
Local brings imaginary worlds to life with his stories. Author, illustrator and Edina resident Derek Anderson is a natural creator. Beginning his...
Father-Daughter Cruise: ‘The Unsinkable Greta James’ Book Review
Jennifer E. Smith is a beloved teen author. If you haven’t read her, you may well know a young woman who has. Like Gabrielle Zevin and...
Supper at Six: ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ Book Review
In the early days of television, the period of time after lunch and before dinner was considered a vast desert for producers. These hours reflected...
Voices Carry: ‘The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World’ Book Review
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina was translated from Italian by Lucy Rand and published in the U.S. in 2021. The novel...
Putting Grief to Paper
Creative pursuits can help people process grief and rediscover hope—as this local author can attest. Although the COVID-19 pandemic is something...
Secrets in the Library: ‘The Personal Library’ Book Review
' In late 1905, a Princeton University librarian named Belle da Costa Greene was interviewed by banker and financier J. Pierpont Morgan. Morgan was...
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Amor Towles’s first novel, Rules of Civility, made the best book lists of 2011. A Gentleman in Moscow did the same in 2016. Five years later, his...
A Delightful Summer Read
June Jones, 28, is the library assistant at the Chalcot Library in rural England. Built in the 1870s as the village school, the library is a red...
A Meditation on Love, Loss and Survival
In 1968, Congress made Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated on the last Monday in May. Originally, it was a day set aside to clean and...
